'Kenyan birth certificate' remains eBay mystery

How much would a genuine copy of President Obama’s birth certificate – from a hospital in Mombasa, Kenya – be worth on the open market?

One eBay seller, known to the public only as “colmado_naranja,” attempted to find out, only to be shot down by the auction website’s administrators … at least four times.

As WND reported, colmado_naranja alleged that he had been traveling in Kenya, where natives boasted that Barack Obama II was, indeed, born in the Coast Provincial Hospital in Mombasa at 7:24 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961, which correlates with speculation that has existed over President Obama’s birthplace since even prior to his election.

The eBay seller, with a flawless track record of dozens of sales on the auction website, also claimed that he was able to obtain a genuine copy of Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate and posted it for sale online, with an opening bid of $1,000 and a “buy it now” price of $1 million.

Original eBay offer for Obama’s ‘Kenyan birth certificate’

As WND reported, however, the auction was taken down again and again. Even after WND posted a story on it yesterday, including the eBay seller’s explanation for why the auction was allegedly scrubbed by eBay administrators, a page offering the birth certificate for sale appeared yet a fourth time … only to disappear yet a fourth time.

And while repeated contacts have been made with colmado_naranja, the validity of his claims – as well as the document – remain a mystery, for the seller has refused to allow the document to be seen or photographed.

In the original listing, colmado_naranja explained, “I am not posting any photos of the birth certificate here on eBay. I have not seen this birth certificate anywhere on the Internet, to post it here on eBay would lead to a flood of facsimiles on the Internet. This would inadvertently decrease the value of the certificate as well.”

At least one investigator, who has traveled to Africa and sought the birth certificate from the very same hospital, however, told WND he remains “skeptical” of the eBay auction’s claims.

WND’s senior staff writer, Jerome Corsi, traveled to Kenya in 2008 to look into Obama’s past and remaining ties to the nation.

While there, however, immigration authorities detained Corsi and his publicist – holding them under armed guard and without food – to prevent Corsi from holding a news conference revealing what he had discovered, eventually requiring thousands of dollars in bribes to set the writer free.

Corsi told WND that despite contacts in government offices, the help of others and even the offer of financial reward, the Coast Provincial Hospital in Mombasa would not confirm Obama’s birth there nor provide access to records.

“When I was there, I tried to get records from that hospital, but I couldn’t do it,” Corsi said. “The hospital either had no records or wouldn’t release them.

Corsi wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the eBay seller may have somehow obtained a genuine document, but stated only that his efforts in Kenya proved fruitless.

WND has continued to attempt to contact the seller through several channels, but thus far, examining the document colmado_naranja claims to hold has proven as difficult as examining the records at the Coast Provincial Hospital.

President Obama’s place of birth, however, remains only one of several questions and possible avenues for answers that remain in determining whether or not Obama is a “natural born citizen” under the U.S. Constitution and eligible to serve as president.

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen.” The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama’s American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama’s citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Complicating the situation is Obama’s decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions.

WND has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, his Punahou school records, his Occidental College records, his Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, his passport, his medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.

The eBay birth certificate seller is a self-proclaimed “collector of old Dominican and Cuban money” and has worked in the Congo.

“This spring I traveled through Kenya and its capital Nairobi. I was overwhelmed by the ‘iconicized’ face of U.S. President Barack Obama that displays itself throughout the country. I had lunch at a small eatery and noticed that the club sandwich with fried plantains was now known as ‘Obama’s Plate of the Day,'” the seller wrote on the initial auction page. “As an American I was bombarded with questions in English (English is national language of Kenya) on my feelings and opinions of a Kenyan governing the United States of America. The first several times I responded in saying that not enough time had elapsed since Barack Obama’s appointment as president of the U.S.A., and that I’d have to hold my official opinion until at least January 2010, a year in office might be sufficient for me to judge his ability to govern the U.S.A.

“Naturally I thought that by ‘Kenyan’ they were referring to Barack Obama’s blood, being that his father Barack Obama Sr. was a native of Kenya. After a day and a half of my being in Nairobi I learned that they were literally referring to President Barack Obama Jr. as being born in Kenya, a native of Kenya.”

The seller also cited the fact that Obama has not release his “Hawaiian” birth certificate. His administration, the seller says, “in an attempt to put the birth certificate issue to a rest, has presented the American public with a fake, forged, fraudulent Hawaiian birth certificate.”

The “certification of live birth” posted online and widely touted as “Obama’s birth certificate” does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same “short-form” document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true “long-form” birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.

Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a “natural born citizen,” no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama’s claim to a Hawaiian birth.